Ramie Targoff's biography of Vittoria Colonna is a timely study of the first published female Italian poet, a close friend of Michelangelo. With a novelist's flair she brings this remarkable and influential woman to life, while also dissecting an entireRead more
One of journalism's legendary editors, Tina Brown kept diaries throughout her eight years as editor in chief of Vanity Fair. The result is an insightful, intimate, fascinating and laugh-out-loud-funny social history of the excessive eighties. Tina Brown is founder of theRead more
In an illuminating exercise, Stephen Greenblatt, author of Will in the World, interrogates the Collected Works to construct a checklist of tyranny based on Shakespeare's plays. Can he demonstrate that the power dynamics in Shakespeare's dramas have contemporary resonance? Stephen Greenblatt, HarvardRead more
Historian Charles Spencer brings to life one of the greatest escapes in British history: an action-packed story of Royalists versus Cromwell's Republicans, recounting how the future Charles II fled from the men who had beheaded his father, Charles I. ChairedRead more
